In one of the worst political humiliation faced by the BJP in recent times, Devendra Fadnavis on Tuesday stepped down as the Chief Minister of Maharashtra ahead of the Supreme Court-mandated floor test.
The development came after NCP’s rebel leader Ajit Pawar announced his resignation as Deputy Chief Minister. Addressing media in Mumbai, Fadnavis said that the people’s mandate was for ‘Mahayuti’.
Addressing media, Fadnavis said that, “the BJP emerged as the biggest party in the Maharashtra Assembly Elections. We formed this government keeping people’s mandate in mind. We won 105 seats.”
“We formed the govt because a group of NCP leaders came to us, but now we don’t want to do horse-trading, so I am going to resign. I am sure now these 3 parties (ShivSena-NCP-Congress) will run the government but I fear that this government is going to bow down under its own pressure.”
“BJP had a better mandate than Shiv Sena. People gave us a clear mandate with 105 seats. Shiv Sena thought they could bargain because of the mandate and started doing it publicly. We formed government keeping mandate in mind. We spoke to Shiv Sena for many days but instead of talking to us they started talking to Congress and NCP.” Fadnavis claimed Shiv Sena was threatening the BJP. “Their only agenda was to keep BJP out of power.”
“As the Assembly term was over, Governor invited us to form the government as the single largest party. They cannot form the government as the three parties in the alliance have completely different ideologies. They took days to arrive at a common minimum programme.”
